"What! You call me—"
"Men! Gentlemen!"
"Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor was himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll be no blood shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now, and, as he had done with the newcomers, he addressed them collectively, authoratively. "When I fight it will not be with one who abandons a woman and a child at a time like this.... God! it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the Rowlands for ten years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had been flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my sight, every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in command here. If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside this stockade—not if the Santees scalped you before my eyes."
For a second there was silence, inaction.
"But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We tried—"
"Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them in, there are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader of men, he turned to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late now,—I'm afraid it is; but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to bring him here. Who's with me? Who's willing to make the ride back to Sioux Falls?"
"Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced, slow of speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit superfluous, pard? We're all with you—that is, as many as you want, I reckon. None of us ain't cats, so we can't croak but once—and that might as well be now as ten years from now."
"All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first twenty to return, go."
From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was McPherson.
"Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.